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Neselrode Pudding
Have a vanilla ice cream. Then place in a bowl half pint candied chestnuts, add two tablespoons maraschino, mix well and let incorporate for five minutes. Then add the chestnuts, etc., to the vanilla ice cream and mix with a wooden spoon for five minutes. Fill six well-cleaned individual pudding moulds with the ice cream, place the moulds in the same freezer, cover and let freeze for one hour. Remove, unmould on a dish with a folded napkin; arrange half a chestnut on top of each Neselrode and serve with a kirsch sauce separately.
A quick assembly job rather than a true custard pudding: this is a bombe built from bought or homemade vanilla ice cream. The only real technique is keeping everything cold enough that the ice cream never slumps.
- Half pint candied chestnutsMeasured by volume, not weight — roughly a cup of marrons glacés, drained and chopped into rough dice. Whole candied chestnuts are sold in jars in syrup or wrapped individually; keep six good halves back for the tops.
- The freezer meant"The same freezer" most likely means the hand-cranked ice-cream churn packed with ice and rock salt, which would account for one hour being enough to set the moulds. A modern domestic freezer will take considerably longer for individual moulds; give them several hours, or overnight to be safe.
- Soften, don't meltFold the chestnuts in while the ice cream is at spreadable, not soupy, consistency — about 10 minutes out of the freezer. Five minutes of stirring with a wooden spoon, as written, will knock out air and produce a dense, chewy result if the base has gone slack.
- MaraschinoThe original means the clear Italian cherry liqueur (Luxardo or similar), not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Two tablespoons is deliberately modest: alcohol depresses the freezing point, and more will keep the pudding from setting.
- Individual mouldsDariole moulds, ramekins or teacups all work. Chill them in the freezer first and line with a strip of parchment if you want a clean release; otherwise dip the outside in warm water for three or four seconds and turn out at once.
- Kirsch sauceNo formula is given. A kirsch sauce of this date is generally a sugar syrup, cooled and flavoured with kirsch to taste — served cold in a jug so it does not melt the pudding.
- Yield and serviceSix portions. The folded napkin on the dish is the standard period presentation, and it also soaks up meltwater so the puddings do not slide. Unmould at the last moment.
Nesselrode pudding is named for Count Karl von Nesselrode, the Russian foreign minister who served under Alexander I and Nicholas I, and its invention is traditionally credited to his chef — usually given as Mouy, though Carême is sometimes credited instead — at a date that cannot be securely fixed. The original was an elaborate frozen chestnut custard with candied fruit, currants and raisins soaked in maraschino, packed in a mould and buried in ice; by the later nineteenth century "Nesselrode" had become shorthand on English and American menus for almost anything frozen and studded with candied chestnut, and it survived into the twentieth century as a pie filling in New York bakeries. The spelling here, Neselrode, is one of many the name acquired in transit. This version, stripped down to bought ice cream, chestnuts and a splash of liqueur, shows what happened to grand-restaurant confections once they reached a domestic cookbook: the ice cream is assumed, and the pudding becomes a garnish problem.